Mother 4 (2008-2009 Pre-Alpha Build)
The Mother 4 2009 Pre-Alpha build is an early version of Mother 4. It was originally created in early 2009, likely by Chaisu and the original dev team, but was released to the public by u/ipatch on the Mother 4 subreddit on March 7th, 2019. It is the first experience the public has gotten to play the game. History In the early days of Mother 4, back when Chaisu was head of development, most of the game's news was hosted on the Starmen website. iPatch heard about the game from there, and joined the team as a musician in 2008. He apparently recieved an early build of the game before he left the team in early to mid 2009. On March 7th, 2019, iPatch found the Mother 4 subreddit and made a post called 'I can't believe this is still in development'. He explained that he didn't mean that in a bad way; he had just seen the earlier developments and was astonished that the project was still going strong a decade later. He also mentioned that he might have a beta version of the game on his computer. A little while later, he updated saying he was going to try to find it. Another update came through. He had found the game, but was teetering between releasing it as a ZIP file, or just recording some gameplay to "respect the (unknown) wishes of the original developer". He eventually decided on the former, and posted a link to a MediaFire page containing the game. Sadly, his Reddit post was later deleted because he violated Rule 6 of the Mother 4 subreddit, which is "No posting any information that wasn't officially released on mother4game.com, starmen.net, or on here." The link to the game, however, is still available in the comments. Gameplay The game takes place in Bellring, an early version of Belring. The player takes control of Chase (an early version of Travis) and a second party member called The Dave. The Dave is visually identical to Chase, meaning he is likely a placeholder character. The only things to do on the overworld are walk, dash (like in Mother 3), and go into a house which warps you close to the starting point. Said house was likely unfinished. In the area of Bellring in which you spawn, there are two varieties of enemies to encounter. The first is the Lake Gull. It looks just like a seagull, and can bite the player for one to two damage. The second is the Bitey Snake, which bites you for one to two damage. Both Chase and The Dave start each battle with 16 HP and 12 PP, no matter what the levels were at the end of the last battle. Options for combat include Bash, Items, Special, Defend and Run Away. They all work just like in Mother 3. The most notable option is Special. Chase has two offensive PK moves, Debug α and Debug Ω, costing seven and eighteen PP, respectively. Despite the previously mentioned 12 PP per character, either can be activated on any turn. On the other hand, the dave has no PK moves in his Special menu, but instead has a move called Decompile. It does not appear to do anything, but using it will give the dialogue, 'The Dave decompiled the enemy!'. When a battle is won, the dialogue box always says 'Woop! You gained some exp!', and 'Woah some more exp?!'. It does not appear possible to level up, though. Music The game contains five music tracks. Battle Against a Mobile Opponent, Ripple Town and the 'You Win!' jingle are from Earthbound. bellring.ogg and retro.ogg, respectively known as Bellring and Rockin' it Retro, are original. All of the tracks can be found in a folder called Music when the game is downloaded. Download The game can be installed from here. Trivia *The game's icon is the same as the favicon for the Mother 4 website on Andonuts, which is viewable via the Wayback machine. *This build of the game was made in Game Maker Studio. **When the Mother 4 project started it was being made in RPG Maker, meaning there may be even earlier versions of the game out there. * It's impossible to die in battle. If you somehow let your HP get to 0, it'll start the counter over at 99 when you next take damage. * The Dave is the name of a programmer on the early development team. **There is an error screen built into the game that mentions The Dave. * This version of the game was thought to be made in late 2008 or early 2009 when it was first released. According to the Mother 4 Preserve, the latter is true. If screenshots from that era of development are accurate, this version of the game is parallel to the game's form at the time. Just dumbed down a bit. Debugoutput.png Combosystem.png Running.png Street.png House.png Youwin!.png